Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown – Down South In The Bayou Country
Grant Alden
Posted On September 1, 2006
The 1960s were unkind to Gatemouth Brown. The blues being revived weren’t his kind of big-band postwar boogie, and a brief stay in Nashville confirmed only that the door had been closed right behind Charley Pride. So he settled first in Bogota, Colombia; then Denver, Colorado; and then, improbably, as a sheriff in Farmington, New Mexico.
And there he rested, legend insists, until Europe came calling. Perhaps, even, there was a French parallel to the British northern soul underground, for a number of American bluesmen recorded for this Barclay’s imprint in the ’70s (the package included discs from McHouston Baker, Professor Longhair, Memphis Slim, and Furry Lewis).
The balance of Gatemouth’s career has been tolerably well-documented; his early Duke-Peacock sides can be found, as can pretty much everything he recorded after 1976. But this is, apparently, the first time the pivotal moments of 1974’s Down South In The Bayou Country have been available in the United States.
Pivotal, that is, because the recording of Down South revived his interest in the music of his native Louisiana and led to the spectacular fusion of cajun, jazz, blues, and country that would fuel his career until his death last year. But it’s a pretty forgettable album, all the same. This edition appends (from a 1972 LP) his version of Delaney & Bonnie’s “Never Ending Song Of Love”, which (the liner notes say; but they also suggest DeFord Bailey was on the Opry in the 1960s) opened the door to Brown’s return to Louisiana. Maybe so, but I’ve never before heard Brown play a song that didn’t swing.
Indeed, the whole of Down South seems oddly tentative, particularly coming from a musician who was as brash and accomplished as Joe Namath. Perhaps some of it is the material, mostly written by a journeyman named Hoyt Garrick, who seems to have led the session. The irony is that Red Lane, who now has a plaque in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, played guitar on these dates.
A year later, Gatemouth recorded the cocky and masterful Black Jack, and never looked back.
